4. When Jesus wrote the Constitution he said that we need guns to fight off our tyrannical government.

5. Right wingers don't know much about Marxism and they definitely don't know any Marxists.

The rebuttal to these points seems rather obvious:

1. Is it a legal requirement for legislatures to know jack shit about a topic before they meddle with it? Clearly not, because "late term abortions" are banned and yet that's not a medical term at all. The right wingers have a point though: when banning stuff it's important to be precise in terminology to prevent unscrupulous fat cat CEOs from getting fatter on profits from selling lethal products that circumvent the rules. I'd be in favor of a ban on production for all civilian semiautomatic firearms and combinations of ammunition and firearms that exceed a bullet certain energy (or individual maxes on ammunition mass and velocities). See! That wasn't so hard to be precise.

2. It's true that banning high velocity semiautomatic rifles wouldn't stop people from killing each other with other guns. But if those other guns are so good at killing, then what's the big deal? Right wingers can use all those other guns to commit suicide, or fight off the government, or shoot their neighbor's dog for barking too loud, or accidently kill their child, or fight off the evil gubment, so why whine so much about it? There are already limits on what kind of "arms" civilians can own, so unless right wingers think they should be able to own antiaircraft missiles then they're already okay with drawing the line somewhere. Gun safety advocates are merely in favor of moving the line, that's all. If moving the line to ban semiautomatic high velocity rifles is bad, then what's the argument for why civilians shouldn't own antiaircraft missiles?

3. I've already addressed this argument above with the point about abortion bans. Arguing that people can't have a say on potential changes to gun laws if they don't own a gun is nonsensical. You don't have to own a gun to be injured by one (though according to the best evidence, if you do own a gun you're far more likely to be killed by one, as it turns out) and gun deaths are common enough that many non gun owners have been affected. I have personally known multiple people that were killed by guns, for instance. If only 1000 total people a year were killed by guns in the US, I think the argument that only gun owners should have a say about gun laws would carry more moral weight; they'd probably be the only ones that would even care in that instance.

4. So if all guns are great at killing things, not just semi automatic high velocity rifles, then surely all those other guns would be great for fighting off our tyrannical government. Or should we legalize civilian ownership of antiaircraft systems? Cuz I bet those would help when the government tries to herd us into FEMA camps. Also, while we're on the subject of how Thomas Jefferson explicitly wrote into the Constitution that we need to use our guns against our own government, why don't right wingers celebrate when elected representatives are shot like Gabby Giffords or Steve Scalise? And why don't they celebrate when cops are ambushed and shot? If shooting federal legislators and armed agents of the state aren't examples of legitimate "fighting against the government" then what is?

5. Most of the Marxists that I know are fervently in favor of gun ownership, and I happen to know quite a few Marxists.

From a public health standpoint, guns are not a priority because there are many other causes of death that are much more common and also likely preventable. But! The gun deaths and injuries in the US are wildly disproportionate compared to other countries, and the best evidence suggests that the reason is our permissive gun laws. So while there are bigger priorities we do know that reducing gun deaths is achievable. Our continued collective choice to do nothing about our country's giant gun body count has upsides, including sports, commerce, collecting, and the widespread (but empirically misguided) feeling that having a gun makes their owners feel safer. Libs don't often acknowledge those upsides, but the right wingers never acknowledge the downsides. Unfortunately for right wingers, in the general population most people acknowledge the downsides and want to make at least some small changes.

Those changes will happen sooner or later, and unless gun nuts can stop shooting up sympathetic clusters of victims in schools and churches then those changes will happen much sooner rather than later.

« Last Edit: March 01, 2018, 03:50:05 PM by Sayyadina »

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“No more should you doubt this, my prince – my sisters and I shall not wait ten-and-seven years for our vengeance.”

Jesus, Grapes. That's some serious Mall Ninja shit right there. A cavalcade of the kind of misinformation and bad ideas that run rampant throughout the gun community, based on nothing other than that they sound plausible. I'm not going to sit here and lecture for an hour on every point you got wrong, so let's just take one.

Take this for example:

Quote from: Grapes

Hollowpoints do not, by design, have much in the way of being able to penetrate people. At this stage, that's not something you should be particularly worried about. Hollowpoints create deformations of air and when they enter a body they mushroom, they kind/sorta explode inside the tissue.

What you're talking about is cavitation. They don't create deformations of air--there's no air inside the body, except for the lungs. And it's just not something that handguns cause, regardless of the round. Ammunition companies like to market their various kinds of hollowpoints and other expanding ammunition as though they create tissue-destroying cavitation, often using ballistic gel to show wider bullet tracks. But the human body doesn't behave like ballistic gel.

What doctors and trauma surgeons will tell you about gunshot wounds is that when you're dealing with pistol rounds, it basically doesn't matter what kind of bullet you're using. From study I linked to earlier: "The degree and amount of laceration and crushing are dependent upon missile velocity, its shape, and angle of impact; however, the shape and construction of a missile are not significant factors at such low-velocities as observed in handguns." link (emphasis mine)

Injury-causing cavitation does not occur until you're dealing with rounds traveling at 2500 feet/sec or above. And that point, it doesn't matter that much how the bullet is constructed--the sheer amount of energy in the bullet is what does the damage.

Hollowpoints are an excellent choice for police officers and for home defense not because they do more damage or because of "stopping power" (which isn't a thing), but because you get less overpenetration.

Jesus, Grapes. That's some serious Mall Ninja shit right there. A cavalcade of the kind of misinformation and bad ideas that run rampant throughout the gun community, based on nothing other than that they sound plausible. I'm not going to sit here and lecture for an hour on every point you got wrong, so let's just take one.

Take this for example:

Quote from: Grapes

Hollowpoints do not, by design, have much in the way of being able to penetrate people. At this stage, that's not something you should be particularly worried about. Hollowpoints create deformations of air and when they enter a body they mushroom, they kind/sorta explode inside the tissue.

What you're talking about is cavitation. They don't create deformations of air--there's no air inside the body, except for the lungs. And it's just not something that handguns cause, regardless of the round. Ammunition companies like to market their various kinds of hollowpoints and other expanding ammunition as though they create tissue-destroying cavitation, often using ballistic gel to show wider bullet tracks. But the human body doesn't behave like ballistic gel.

What doctors and trauma surgeons will tell you about gunshot wounds is that when you're dealing with pistol rounds, it basically doesn't matter what kind of bullet you're using. From study I linked to earlier: "The degree and amount of laceration and crushing are dependent upon missile velocity, its shape, and angle of impact; however, the shape and construction of a missile are not significant factors at such low-velocities as observed in handguns." link (emphasis mine)

Injury-causing cavitation does not occur until you're dealing with rounds traveling at 2500 feet/sec or above. And that point, it doesn't matter that much how the bullet is constructed--the sheer amount of energy in the bullet is what does the damage.

Hollowpoints are an excellent choice for police officers and for home defense not because they do more damage or because of "stopping power" (which isn't a thing), but because you get less overpenetration.

Me: Pfft. Hylo, science nerds don't know anything about guns. These eggheads don't know jackshit about gunshot injuries, look they're from Taxachussetts or something...Me: <checks the linked paper>Me: BAGHDAD. Subjects were studied over a 10 month period in 2010...Me: Yah, well. But they're not named Cleetus, so they're not experts.

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“No more should you doubt this, my prince – my sisters and I shall not wait ten-and-seven years for our vengeance.”

Inequality is /correlated/ with political instability, reduced economic mobility, productive capacity, increased propensity for physical and mental illness. If it was the empirical /cause/ (And not a situation where one of the other factors inversely causes the others), I would agree.

I would wager that you would find it easier to prove that mental illness can /cause/ inequality in individuals, and not the other way around. I would wager that you would find it easier to prove that physical illness can /cause/ inequality in individuals, and not the other way around.

I bring up Marx, because I believe the whole Haves vs the Have-nots trope is complete bullshit. I also find it amusing that the majority of people who fight for gun-grabbing also happen to walk in line with marxist ideologies.

The Gini coefficient does not look at individuals. It looks at countries. An individual with mental illness--depending on the issue--will probably have a harder time earning a high income, for sure. But that's an individual problem. When an entire society starts having an increase of mental illness, that's going to be caused by something. And the data show that income and wealth inequality are a major cause. You can track countries over time and see it happen--for instance, as inequality in the US has increased, obesity, cardiac disease, other stress-related diseases have increased, and life expectancy has been dropping.

It's funny that you think Marxists are pro-gun control. They're really not. The further left you go, the less support their is for it.

Quote

Tissue damage? For sure. That being said, a .22 to the heart, the head would do just fine. If you look at your grandmother's .22 revolver and don't see a tool that causes death, you're way off base.

That being said, I'll bite and give you some numbers.You seem to be caught up on ballistics of individual rounds, so lets play that game. I'll compare the ammunition between an AR-15, my Deer-rifle (A Finnish m91 Mosin Nagant), My brother's Winchester model 94, and a $150 Maverick Shotgun.

your "Mass shooter weapon" is not relatively powerful compared to other common rifles, or even to the shotgun.

I don't recall saying that grandma's .22 couldn't kill somebody. Hit someone just right, and it could certainly kill them--and hit someone anywhere, and it'll cause serious injury, just like any other firearm. It's seriously a peashooter, though. It's got a bad design--leaks a lot of force out the back of the barrel. I'd be surprised if it hits 900 feet per second when it fires. You barely need ear protection firing it indoors.

Yes, there are a lot of hunting rifles that are more powerful than an AR-15. Yes, a Mosin-Nagant has a more powerful round. Those things kick like a mule.

What a Mosin-Nagant doesn't do is fire 30 rounds in 7 seconds. Which brings us to:

Quote

Now, lets address your contention that being semi-auto makes it /even more deadly/.

The fastest rifle shot there was 6 shots in 6 seconds. The shotgun guy was able to fire faster, but has to spend a lot of time reloading after he empties the gun.

Compare that to the AR-15:

30 rounds in 7 seconds fired by just some asshole who could have picked that gun up for the first time that day. And all he needs to do to reload is drop out the magazine and slap in another one.

AR-15s are super easy to fire, too. Low recoil, easy to aim.

No one is saying that the AR-15 is the most powerful rifle in the world. It's not even necessarily the most dangerous semi-auto rifle. Let's ban the manufacture of all semi-auto rifles.

Quote

I asked a question of you before, Hylo. Do you have /any/ first-hand experience on this topic?

Have I ever shot anybody or been shot at by anybody? No.

Have I fired guns before? Plenty. I don't own any myself, but I live in Oklahoma. My dad likes to go to the gun range, and he likes company. I've got friends who like to go plinking. I know what it's like to fire an AR-15 and a Mosin-Nagant. I haven't spent much time with shotguns, but I've fired a variety of handguns and rifles.

I bring up Marx, because I believe the whole Haves vs the Have-nots trope is complete bullshit. I also find it amusing that the majority of people who fight for gun-grabbing also happen to walk in line with marxist ideologies.

It's not even remotely a coincidence. You can't implement Marxist policies while guns are still in the hands of the people. You have to demonize weaponry, remove it from the majority, then marginalize the minority into a hated group. That's exactly what's happening now. That's exactly what happened in the last century to over 90 million people. They try and pin some 17 dead kids on gun ownership, and the lack of gun ownership let tyrannical states murder over 90 million people. What a farce of an argument they have.

As to arguing the technical details with people who hate guns and believe you shouldn't have any, why even bother? What a waste of time. It's like arguing the health benefits of chicken over beef with a militant vegan.

This thread is about the least useful on the whole forum. I only chime in when I want to riff on something ideological. Most of these guys arguing against you, Melkor, are treating useful debate like it's a blood sport. They're just playing to a crowd and trying to score points, not actually listen to what you're saying. Save your arguments for people who are actual thinkers. Let steel sharpen steel.

Most Marxists hate gun control. They see it as a means for the State to oppress the people.

Ok, I'll bite. Not on your weird bullet stuff because (being made largely of soft tissue) I don't want to be shot by ANY caliber.

But on your comments about Marxists.

When I say Marxists want to abolish guns in the hands of the people, I am talking about well ... the Soviet Union. Are you going to now resort to the No True Scotsman argument or will we agree that the Soviets based their model off of Marxism?

It's true that Marx himself was very pro-gun in the hands of the proletariat, but Marx also did not establish a country. The Founding Fathers of the United States were pro-gun on paper, but they started trying to ban guns before the ink was even dry on the Bill of Rights. A conservative Republican government is just as quick to grab your guns as a liberal Democrat one. ALL governments want to disarm their citizenry. It's what governments do.

I don't know a lot of Marxists. I also put no credence in people who say, "This group believes this because I know one and he does". If there's some recognized, modern thinkers who are pro-gun and also Marxist, I'm willing to read what they're writing. Please educate me with some links and I'll take time to actually respond.

But my core belief is that we are ALL human beings, regardless of our political positions, and by virtue of being human beings we have the right to defend ourselves from sociopaths, whether they be methhead home invaders or badge wearing government thugs. I believe that you have that right, as well as myself. No paper gave us that right. No government did. We got it when we came squirming into the world, shaking a wet fist while we were half out of a vagina and howling our rage at the world.

The only people I've ever shot were because YOUR GOVERNMENT told me to. The people who I have cause to point a gun at since, I declined to pull the trigger and end their life because they backed down from the harm they were intending. I don't intend to shoot anyone else ever, unless I'm forced into that circumstance by THEIR actions.

I came across these since we've been talking about Australia/UK gun bans.

Quote

Mass Shootings in Australia and New Zealand: A Descriptive Study of IncidenceJustice Policy Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 201121 Pages Posted: 3 Aug 2012 Samara McPhedranaffiliation not provided to SSRNJeanine Bakeraffiliation not provided to SSRNDate Written: 2008AbstractThe development of legislation aimed at reducing the incidence of firearm-related death is an ongoing interest within the spheres of criminology, public policy, and criminal justice. Although a body of research has examined the impacts of significant epochs of regulatory reform upon firearm-related suicides and homicides in countries like Australia, where strict nationwide firearms regulations were introduced in 1996, relatively little research has considered the occurrence of a specific type of homicide: mass shooting events. The current paper examines the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand (a country that is socioeconomically similar to Australia, but with a different approach to firearms regulation) over a 30 year period. It does not find support for the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms has prevented mass shootings, with New Zealand not experiencing a mass shooting since 1997 despite the availability in that country of firearms banned in Australia. These findings are discussed in the context of social and economic trends.

AbstractThe 1996-1997 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) in Australia introduced strict gun laws, primarily as a reaction to the mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996, where 35 people were killed. Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we reanalyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates. (JEL C22, K19)

Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference? Jeanine Baker Samara McPhedran The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 47, Issue 3, 1 May 2007, Pages 455–469, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azl084Published: 18 October 2006

Ok, I'll bite. Not on your weird bullet stuff because (being made largely of soft tissue) I don't want to be shot by ANY caliber.

But on your comments about Marxists.

When I say Marxists want to abolish guns in the hands of the people, I am talking about well ... the Soviet Union. Are you going to now resort to the No True Scotsman argument or will we agree that the Soviets based their model off of Marxism?

It's true that Marx himself was very pro-gun in the hands of the proletariat, but Marx also did not establish a country. The Founding Fathers of the United States were pro-gun on paper, but they started trying to ban guns before the ink was even dry on the Bill of Rights. A conservative Republican government is just as quick to grab your guns as a liberal Democrat one. ALL governments want to disarm their citizenry. It's what governments do.

I don't know a lot of Marxists. I also put no credence in people who say, "This group believes this because I know one and he does". If there's some recognized, modern thinkers who are pro-gun and also Marxist, I'm willing to read what they're writing. Please educate me with some links and I'll take time to actually respond.

The Soviet Union was Marxist with some very important alterations by Lenin. The main difference between Marxism and Marxist-Leninism in ideological terms is that Marxist-Leninists advocate vanguardism--the idea that a small revolutionary vanguard party should organize, seize power, and begin remaking society and dragging the rest of the proletariat into socialist ideology with them. Everywhere that vanguardism has been tried, it has (predictably) resulted in the original party becoming authoritarian, never relinquishing its power back to the workers and instead taking the position of power that the State they overthrew once had.

Marxist-Leninists are a small fraction of the Marxists and socialists that you'll encounter in the West. Most Marxists in the US are some version of anarcho-communist. MLists are typically referred to as "Tankies," a pejorative referring to the fact that the USSR sent tanks into Hungary in 1956 to crush a Marxist revolution(!).

You won't find a whole lot of Socialists spending a lot of ink on gun control, for the most part--they're largely concerned with other issues. For instance, the typical Socialist response to mass shootings is to point out (correctly, I think) that gun violence--and all other forms of violence--are typically caused by economic issues, mental health issues, etc., which are created and exacerbated by a capitalist system that leaves a large part of the population without any stability or even, in many cases, the basic necessities of life. So it is that in 2016 in their piece in Jacobin, Eman Abdelhadi and Edna Bonhomme were advocating solving structural violence and racist policy as their solution to gun violence.

Quote

But my core belief is that we are ALL human beings, regardless of our political positions, and by virtue of being human beings we have the right to defend ourselves from sociopaths, whether they be methhead home invaders or badge wearing government thugs. I believe that you have that right, as well as myself. No paper gave us that right. No government did. We got it when we came squirming into the world, shaking a wet fist while we were half out of a vagina and howling our rage at the world.

The only people I've ever shot were because YOUR GOVERNMENT told me to. The people who I have cause to point a gun at since, I declined to pull the trigger and end their life because they backed down from the harm they were intending. I don't intend to shoot anyone else ever, unless I'm forced into that circumstance by THEIR actions.

Why would you want to ban guns from the hands of people like me?

I believe that you do have a right to own a gun for self-defense. And I've known enough people in rural Oklahoma that have had to fend off wild dogs, coyotes, rattlesnakes, etc., to know that if you live on a farm in certain parts of the country, you need a gun for protection. Keep your handgun. Keep your shotgun. Keep your hunting rifles.

Semi-automatic rifles, on the other hand, especially those that take 30 round mags, are not necessary to keep you safe. They're no threat to the government--if they were, the government would have confiscated them already, as they disarmed the Black Panthers back when they were considered a threat. So what are they good for?

To try and understand your final point, are you claiming that your belief that semi-automatics would not be effective against government invalidates my belief that I'm entitled to try, should said theoretical government become tyrannical?

I would vehemently disagree with that assertion, if that is what you're saying. A man's right to free speech is not invalidated by his likelihood of saying something stupid, so why would you think the right to self-defense is invalidated by a potential inability to prosecute said defense?

I would suggest you read "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook" by Luttwak to change your perspective on the effectiveness of armed insurrections against tyrannical government. It lays out numerous historical examples in which armed resistance either prevented a government from shifting totalitarian, or reverted it back to type when they met resistance.

But I think I would meet your definition of "need". I live in a huge district with only 5 cops. If they come at all when you call, they show up hours later. Violent crime is low and property crime is extremely high. However since criminals are often armed and violent crime is not NON-EXISTENT, many people do own firearms here and are quick to use them. This is one reason why violent crime is low and the criminals have shifted towards property crime as a means of self-preservation.

There's a great anarchist quote that goes around ... I can't give it proper attribution. It goes: "Anarchy does not prevent the chance that some sociopaths may loot, rape, and pillage. But a government assures it."

I've been trying to think of a way to express this without reductio ad absurdum but failed. Here goes anyway.

It would be bad if everyone had their own nuclear and chemical weapons. I hope we can agree on this. Assuming we do, we are in agreement that there need to be limits on just how powerful a weapon the average civilian can be permitted to own. I'm curious where, specifically, you draw the line? Are suicide vests okay? It'd potentially be a pretty powerful deterrent against violent crime. How about tanks in case someone tries to ram you off the road or attack you with a car bomb? Large range EMP devices to protect against drones and other automated weaponry? Mines to prevent trespass on your property?

I would suggest you read "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook" by Luttwak to change your perspective on the effectiveness of armed insurrections against tyrannical government. It lays out numerous historical examples in which armed resistance either prevented a government from shifting totalitarian, or reverted it back to type when they met resistance.

Did any of those governments have flying death robots, one of the largest (and arguably the most effective) standing military forces in the world, the ability to intercept pretty much all forms of communication, and the means to level entire blocks without even stepping outside? Ideologically speaking, I would love to see the US government fall and be replaced with something better, but any thought of this being achieved violently by anything less than the combined forces of, well, most of the rest of the world is almost laughable.

The fact that you couldn't come up with an argument that WASN'T ad absurdum didn't perhaps inform you that you didn't have a good argument?

ETA: If I seem brusque consider then that you KNEW it was a logical fallacy but you presented it anyway, and I've already addressed it when multiple other people attempted to use it as their argument.

Your belief that we could not successfully prosecute a resistance against the American military machine does not constitute an invalidation of my right to own military-grade firearms.

You also haven't bothered to go through the factual examples in the document I provided, unless you're a speed reader.

You also don't seem to realize that dudes in flip-flops and bathrobes have been holding that same military machine AT BAY for what constitutes most of you children's lives. Have we conquered Afghanistan? Nope. Iraq? Nope. The only way the freedom machine can move about safely in either country, after we've poured billions in top notch hardware into the region, is in large armored convoys.

Now imagine how that same military machine would fare in say ... Kentucky.

Also, keep in mind that while the US is CURRENTLY considered the world military leader, we're not always going to keep that status, not when we're so deep in debt to foreign nations that have paid for our stupid grudge-wars overseas that, you, as americans, voted representitives into power to make decisions, and these are the decisions they made...

What you might not understand, or appreciate the significance of... well, there's a few things there. There's the fact that ISIS is currently producing weapons that are not just military grade, but some are quite interesting and resourceful, with a wide range of applications. Where's the iron fist to control this? Oh, wait, it's been trying for, how long now? How much of that trying has shifted things to where, by necessity, such innovations occur? Hmmm. Still, they're not a rival, if we wanted to we could tell Russia, you know what, fuck this, I'm out, and let them deal with it in their, particular way.

More than even that, China is going to surpass us in arms manufacturing and the production of military equipment sooner or later, and they don't have the same concerns we do when selling to foreign governments. You may not have to defend against your own government anytime soon, but say they sell to someone who has beef with us, then we're going to feel some very real backlash. All of this hearkens back to the fact that, as a country, we felt pretty damn invincible until a bunch of guys with boxcutters caused one of the most damaging recent acts we've experienced...

Did they use rifles? Fuck no. They used, simple tools. Conversely, firing a rifle at someone with a boxcutter on an airplane is more than sufficient grounds to deny you in-flight pretzels... actually, it would probably comprimise the integrity of the hull and lead to rapid depressurization. I'm not sure how damaging that would be to the aircraft, but I seriously hope you've been paying attention to the pre-flight safety briefing most people sleep through.

But I think the thing we can all agree on, regardless of affiliation, is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. Wondering what a few people who stumbled off the path used to commit crimes, then regulating it, is not only expensive, but counter-productive. What is important is stopping it before it happens.

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Quote from: Is Friday

If you ever hassle me IC for not playing much that means that I'm going to play even less or I'll forever write you off as a neckbeard chained to his computer. So don't be a dick.

To try and understand your final point, are you claiming that your belief that semi-automatics would not be effective against government invalidates my belief that I'm entitled to try, should said theoretical government become tyrannical?

People having guns didn't prevent the NSA from engaging in massive data collection of US citizens. It hasn't prevented the US from imprisoning more people than China--a universally recognized police state with 4 times the population of the US.

You are "entitled to try" armed insurrection as much as anyone is. No government is going to tolerate that, though. It's never going to be a legal right.

But we have two interests that we are trying to balance--an interest in presenting a check to tyranny, and an interest in preventing mass shootings. With regard to the first, gun rights are showing themselves to be useless, if not worse than useless--many of the tyrannical actions of the US government have been supported by the majority of people carrying guns. We can do something about the second, though. No other developed country in the world has to deal with mass shootings the way the US does. This should be fixable.

That said, I agree, we could save a LOT of money by not imprisoning people for things that, admittedly, don't harm anyone else. The issue is any time you form a law, you do so with the knowlege that if said law isn't followed, it results in imprisonment (which, costs money) OR, sending men with guns to kill people. Sure, it might be a fine at first, but if someone refuses to pay that fine, what are you going to do, just shake your head and say "Oh you, knock it off" and roll your eyes? No, you imposed the fine as a matter of law, it must be enforced. If someone is not following the law, you must send people to make sure the law is followed. If you want to take guns, you'll have to send the appropriate enforcement team to go collect them, and surprise, there really aren't that many non-fatal ways to confiscate weapons.

If someone wants to snort a whole bunch of coke? I think that's a really shitty hobby, but that's their decision. That said I smoke alpha particles like nicotine is air, so I'm not exactly in a position to criticize someone else for having a potentially harmful method of enjoying life. However, for the coke snorter, we have laws in place that not only enforce inflationary prices on their drug of choice, but also compel our law enforcement to, you know, go out and do something about it. Coke is not the only substance, and probably not the most destructive, but it is there. It is a waste of our resources to try and stop people from snorting battery acid, or to police mattress tags. This is because of squares and prudes afraid of people getting high and hippies, and a relic of a particular era in American politics, that is costing us a huge chunk of what we collect.

Instead of say, freeing up some money there and sending the black market crashing, some people's higher priority is to create a gun black market too. It doesn't matter what's illegal, as anyone who's bought copious amounts of narcotics could tell you. Outlawing guns doesn't mean guns go away, it just means, murder becomes a rich man's hobby. Doesn't sound like economic equality to me. I don't believe in gun control because it's pretty freaking clear we are losing the war on drugs and you want to put another plate on the menu. Fine, I can't stop you, I am but one lone voice with a rather odd idea of reason that no one else will listen to, but I assure you, you will have no more success in your intended goal from that, than you have in other, similar ventures. If you want to study where history failed us, look into prohibition.

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Quote from: Is Friday

If you ever hassle me IC for not playing much that means that I'm going to play even less or I'll forever write you off as a neckbeard chained to his computer. So don't be a dick.

You can laugh if you want... or you could read about the little girl who was shot by a SWAT team because some idiot got some details on someone else and called the police over a freaking MINECRAFT grudge... and didn't even have the right address. You want to heap error on top of error? Doing a damn fine job, especially the whole not reversing it when there's plentiful evidence that you might be wrong. Who are we supposed to trust on the causes of gun crime anyway? Hopefully not the fine people pushing gun control, their logic would be perfect in a world created by a magical unicorn that farts rainbows. The issue is you do not realize that all matters of law are related to the law as it stands, and that law is compulsory and escalates into murder if there is no compliance. It creates a terrible system rife with abuses. In my opinion, what we need is less law for your ordinary citizen, and more law for your huge monopolies.

... and take the fines and taxes and redistribute them among the poor.

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Quote from: Is Friday

If you ever hassle me IC for not playing much that means that I'm going to play even less or I'll forever write you off as a neckbeard chained to his computer. So don't be a dick.

It wasn't an argument, Miradus, it was a question (that you didn't answer). I was genuinely asking what your stance was and the best way I could figure out to present the question involved starting at the absurd top. Fuck me for trying to understand your PoV, I guess. It won't happen again.

It wasn't an argument, Miradus, it was a question (that you didn't answer). I was genuinely asking what your stance was and the best way I could figure out to present the question involved starting at the absurd top. Fuck me for trying to understand your PoV, I guess. It won't happen again.

My apologies then. I considered you to be in the same category as that other.

So if your question is, how does a modern day guerilla force operate against a modern military, well, they do. And they do it pretty well. Particularly in areas that don't have a huge government presence (like mine).

I've said before that my preference isn't to fight but to flee, if a government suddenly goes too far tyrannical. But there are ways to manage, particularly against minimal government forces that don't WANT to find you very badly (because they know what might happen if they do).

Matt Bracken wrote a good book series, "Enemies Foreign and Domestic". It's not just doomer porn. It's well researched and decently written. You might enjoy it.

I thought about enumerating the ways in which an individual could do things, but then I decided against it. A public forum like this isn't the place. Go read some books. It's done in fiction where nobody can get arrested for speculation.

So where did the Branch Davidians and the Black Panthers go wrong exactly?

Political climate, the Black Panthers have been specifically targetted by the FBI, to the point where the FBI would execute key figures in the movement and blame it on black street gangs hoping it would shut them up with infighting. With the branch davidians? I dunno, someone wanted to roast marshmallows on burning children corpses? The ATF did that, and it was, if I recall correctly, in the middle of Clinton's presidency, or thereabouts.

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Quote from: Is Friday

If you ever hassle me IC for not playing much that means that I'm going to play even less or I'll forever write you off as a neckbeard chained to his computer. So don't be a dick.

It's a fantasy if you think there could be a major civil uprising against "tyranny" without some kind of economic collapse or other catastrophe. In which case we've got a lot more to worry about than just "tyranny." (Speaking of which--we're about to head into a recession. Get out of stocks if you can. Bonds might not be much better.)

The 2nd Amendment gun nuts have shown themselves to be extremely reactionary and extremely gullible. They overwhelmingly voted for Trump, the most dictatorial president we've had in living memory, and they think that the economic problems faced by so many in the US are due to immigration and to "bad culture" in black communities. Those narratives do a lot to serve those the powers that be.

The issue is you do not realize that all matters of law are related to the law as it stands, and that law is compulsory and escalates into murder if there is no compliance. It creates a terrible system rife with abuses. In my opinion, what we need is less law for your ordinary citizen, and more law for your huge monopolies.

... and take the fines and taxes and redistribute them among the poor.

You sound like a Socialist.

That's a compliment. People love Socialism. Even here in the US, as long as you call it something else. Here in Oklahoma, the most trusted institutions are organized along socialist or near-socialist lines, like the electric co-operatives and the credit unions.

I AM a socialist. And you're right, even now, we have some very big things to be worried about, for example, did you know, the magma chambers in yellowstone are filling? I care less that some murderous asshole gets his hand on a gun than I do about the very real event we may soon face.

EDIT: With any luck it'll come out as a faint ashy poot, and less end of the world scenario than we're due for.

« Last Edit: March 02, 2018, 01:34:28 AM by Grapes »

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Quote from: Is Friday

If you ever hassle me IC for not playing much that means that I'm going to play even less or I'll forever write you off as a neckbeard chained to his computer. So don't be a dick.